Food is big business in West Yorkshire. It is home to two of the UK’s big four supermarkets (Asda and Wm Morrison), the country’s biggest dairy products company (Arla), as well as Northern Foods, one of the UK’s biggest food manufacturers.

At the same time, a growing band of smaller and more entrepreneurial food manufacturers, producing everything from bagels and ice cream to Halal baby food for the Muslim community, are emerging alongside the big food manufacturers based in West Yorkshire.

Leeds lies at the heart of a Yorkshire food industry that comprises more than 1,100 food and drink companies generating turnover of £8bn ($16bn). Although much of the food manufacturing is done elsewhere in the region, Leeds has become increasingly important as a headquarters location.

Northern Foods recently shifted its head office from Hull to Leeds, and Glisten, the sweet manufacturer, moved its head office across the Pennines from Blackburn to Leeds.

Close proximity to the headquarters of two of the country’s biggest supermarkets is clearly an advantage for food manufacturers, given the buying power of the supermarkets. It helps explain why Arla, Asda’s sole milk supplier, continued to retain its UK headquarters and more than 1,000 staff in Leeds, after its takeover by Denmark’s Arla Group.

There are considerable similarities in the history of Arla, Asda, and Northern Foods. All three started off as dairy businesses collecting milk from local farmers. Asda, which used to be known as Associated Dairies, diversified into supermarkets in the 1960s, and Northern Foods, which started out as a family run dairy business in 1937, changed its name from Northern Dairies in 1972 to underline its transformation into a food manufacturer.

By contrast, Morrison, the UK’s fourth biggest supermarket group, has always been a retailer. It was established by William Morrison, father of Sir Ken Morrison, Morrison’s current chairman, who set up a grocery stall at Bradford market in 1899. However, it was Sir Ken who turned a small regional grocery chain into one of the UK’s most successful supermarket groups.

Sir Ken, who finally retires this month, has underlined his commitment to his home town of Bradford by building a new £50m headquarters there in 2005.

There have been fears that the aftermath of Morrison’s troubled £3bn takeover of rival supermarket group Safeway in March 2004, and the subsequent overhaul of the Yorkshire company’s top management team, will weaken Morrison’s long-term commitment to Bradford after Sir Ken’s retires.

However, the experience of Asda, which was taken over by Wal-Mart, the US retailing giant, in 1999, suggests such fears could turn out to be unfounded. After a rocky patch a few years ago Asda has recovered its old growth potential and is once again one of Leeds’ great business success stories.

It has overtaken J Sainsbury to become the UK’s number two supermarket chain after Tesco. The number of Asda stores has risen by nearly 50 per cent to 352, and its workforce is up by more than a third, to 160,000, since Wal-Mart took charge.

Asda’s above-average growth is underlined by recently announced plans to open another 22 stores in 2008, creating an extra 9,000 jobs. Andy Bond, Asda’s chief executive, and his top management, plus 1,500 staff, show no sign of wanting to exchange their headquarters in Leeds city centre for the questionable benefits of being “closer to the action” in London.

The size of the region’s big food retailers and food manufacturers is not the only thing that gives Leeds and West Yorkshire a competitive edge in the UK food industry. It is also home to a growing ethnic food industry.

Bradford’s large Indian and Pakistani communities have spawned a number of fast-growing restaurant chains of which Aagrah, set up by Mohammed Sabir, and Akbar’s, set up by Shabir Hussain, are among the best known nationally.

But Mumtaz, which has been transformed from a small Bradford take-away in 1980 and into an award-winning restaurant that catered for the Queen last year, has the greatest potential to develop into a sizeable food business.

While most of its competitors have stuck to the traditional Asian restaurant business, it has diversified into ethnic food manufacturing. Mumtaz Food Industries, which supplies its own branded goods to all the big supermarket chains, is now much the biggest part of the family business, and has recently signed a contract with the National Health Service to supply Halal baby food to hospitals across the UK.

Gul-Nawaz Khan Akbar, managing director of Mumtaz Food Industries, one of two brothers running the Mumtaz family business, cites Sir Ken Morrison, the outgoing chairman of Morrison’s, as his biggest inspiration.

Nevertheless, even an aggressive Yorkshire retailer such as Sir Ken would probably have baulked at celebrating the Queen’s recent visit to Mumtaz’s Bradford operation by putting Her Majesty’s face, plus the words “the food was beautiful”, on the company website.